It’s occupied everything for the past couple of days, so here are my thoughts on the US elections. I would like to say that I overestimated the supposed blue wave, but now it’s apparent that what I overestimated is the sense of decency of Americans.
Voting in 2016, one could be forgiven to not know what kind of president Trump really would be. Aside from the sex scandals and racism against Mexicans, one could still be hopeful that the Donald Trump campaigning would be different once he’s in the Oval Office. But after four years, there’s been a Muslim ban, he’s attacked every minority, alienated his allies, coddled dictators, wrecked the economy, gave over a trillion dollars to the richest people on the planet, allowed Puerto Rico to drown and California to burn, tolerated Nazis, encouraged violence against black people, gassed people for a photo shoot, suggested that Biden would be assassinated five days if elected, asked for the imprisonment of his political opponents, attacked veterans, turned the US military into mercenaries for hire, allowed the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans from a preventable pandemic… I could go on and on. But after all of these, the election is still too close to call. It’s not a landslide. A significant chunk of Americans are fine with the bigotry, ignorance, and incompetence. Trump is not a hiccup. He is the rotten soul of half of the country.
Koreans managed to impeach and imprison their president for corruption while she was in office. They collectively decided they’re not okay with it. Americans saw Trump and half of them asked, “Can I have some more, please?”
When Obama was elected, many people in the country celebrated it like it was a collective good deed. Finally, America was on its way to going beyond the sins of slavery. But really, maybe Obama was the hiccup. Maybe Trump and the people that allow Trump to be as vile as he is as long as they get what they want… maybe they’re the norm. I mean, looking back at my expected landslide, Trump and his cronies were coming in to the election deeply unpopular. They have revealed themselves to be craven, hypocrites, and extremely inept. Fortunately for them, Democrats are also craven and extremely inept. God help Biden, but his policies make him equivalent to a Republican from the 80s. The Democrats are so protective of their own self interests and serving their donors that they went with the most milk toast candidates in the elections. They lost a couple of seats in the House and won’t be able to take the majority in the Senate. This was after Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham were at their most vile! Only the loser Democrats could find a way to lose this much to the most unpopular group of politicians I have ever seen in my lifetime. Pelosi and Schumer should be run out of town.
And speaking of Pelosi. Where are those “arrows in her quiver” that she mentioned regarding preventing Amy Coney Barrett from being confirmed? Horrible.
Many Democrats are just as inept. For as many times Trump had suggested that Biden was hiding in a basement, the person who was hiding in a basement the whole time was Barrack Obama. He didn’t really go out and campaign for his former vice president until less than two weeks before the election. Wasn’t he upset about what’s happening in the country or in the world? Why can’t he attack the man whose making a mockery of his old job and killing Americans in the process. Democrats play this rule about being civil when Republicans spit on their face and call them suckers for unnecessarily crippling themselves. They really love shooting themselves in the foot.
Kamala Harris was nowhere to be found as well. Remeber when John McCain ran for president and Sarah Palin was virtually ubiquitous? She was on TV, she was on Saturday Night Live, she was selling herself just as much as she was selling John McCain. After all, she was going to be a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land. Where was Kamala Harris? Why couldn’t she have been out there just as much as Palin was for McCain? Why are Democrats so bad at politics?
So what do I think will happen? Well, I believe as I believed back in Tuesday, Biden will still win this election. As I’m writing this, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are trending towards him. But really, if Biden wins, he is really inheriting a consolation prize. Half of the country revealed themselves to be fine with bigotry and chaos, and they don’t want him to be president. And already, Mitch McConnell is pledging to block everything Biden would do, starting with his cabinet picks. Biden will win, but without a Senate, the country will be effectively run by Mitch McConnell. The Democrats won’t be able to get much done in the first two years, they will get blamed for it as well as for not being able to fix the many things that the Trump administration broke, and they will suffer politically for it come the next election. It would be like, “you think George Bush was bad? Wait til you see Trump!” Next time, it would be, “you thin Trump was bad? Wait til you see, I don’t know, President Tucker Carlson.”
So yeah, this week, the lesson is if you’re not a straight white man, America hates you and doesn’t care about you. Forget the movies and television shows. The country is not as progressive as that. Go into any room, and there’s a fifty percent chance that the stranger you just met will have a problem with you. Heck, even when the other person is the same demographic as you, they probably don’t care about you. Just look at all of the white women who don’t care about other white women. Which reminds me of my sister asking me why Cubans overwhelmingly vote conservative despite the fact that the Trump administration has consistently attacked Hispanics. It’s because many Cubans don’t think they’re the same as Mexicans. Many Koreans don’t think they’re the same as Chinese. They don’t realize that to the untrained eye, a brown person is a brown person, an Asian is an Asian. They got theirs, so why bother with others. I mean, I know Filipinos who don’t mind the racism against Mexicans, and I’m like, “Dude, you look Mexican!”
And yeah, to hell with reality TV as well. I’ve hated them for years now, even the ones here in Korea, but now I hate them even more. Trump is the product of Mark Burnett, the man who made Survivor and the Apprentice. He popularized the notion that the fakeness on TV shows is real. He rescued Trump from abject ruin and who now pushes the notion that the news is fake or at least anything that goes against my personal beliefs is fake. Don’t watch reality TV. Heck, don’t support Youtubers or any video influencers as well. With enough clout, celebrities get it into their heads that they should be running things. Look at Kanye West. Look at Sargon of Akkad, and look at Donald Trump. Leave politics to those who actually care about politics, people who have put in the time in their communities and have skin in the game.
There’s still a lot of ballots to be counted. Biden might win this election, but the nightmare is far from over. The only cold comfort would be Trump not running things in the Oval Office anymore. It is highly unlikely that the Democrats would ever go after him or his cronies for any crime when they are no longer in power, so don’t get your hopes up. Trump will never spend a day in prison. If anything, he will probably continue to command his Jim Jones cult when he’s no longer in power. This same cult would be the same group of people voting for the likes of Mitch McConnell, so Trump and his ilk would still have a significant amount of power even when out of office. This is why I was hoping for a landslide coming in to these elections. The nightmare will still continue. If you’re in America, your neighbor is horrible. If you’re in Canada, despite Biden winning, America is horrible. The nightmare is the norm.
Or I could be wrong. And Trump wins the elections.
The Weekly 